Any Pie Left:My kid is some kind of genius at Battlefield, he has nothing but contempt for COD and COD players. I don't know what the diff is, myself.

Someone will say it's the realism, and another person will post the video of the guy jumping out of a jet, sniping the enemy jet's pilot in the face, and then hijacking the enemy jet and using it against them.

THAT is the reason why Battlefield is superior. Not realism, but the fact that you can do crazy ass shiat like that.

Is the single player campaign as bad as the first one? Because that was easily one of the worst I've ever played.

/ Play a lot of the first one anyway.// Show me another 4-player splitscreen multiplayer console FPS with bots on a modern console, and I'll stop./// Only other one I'm aware of is the Perfect Dark re-release on the 360, which I love, but sometimes my friends want to play something else.

[csb]One of my firends had to perform the Heimlich on another friend while playing PD because the guy choking rounded a corner and came face to face with another player that had about a dozen arrows sticking out of him. Supposedly that was one of the funniest gaming moments he ever had and he inhaled the mouthful of cocktail weenises and sauerkraut he was chewing on.

[/csb]

/runner up to that moment was slap fights in the bathroom stall in Goldeneye

China and the US could very well enter into a cold war or a hot war. Perhaps this writer needs to do some research into the economic situation in Europe just before WW1. England had significant economic and social ties to Germany.

China and the US could very well enter into a cold war or a hot war. Perhaps this writer needs to do some research into the economic situation in Europe just before WW1. England had significant economic and social ties to Germany.

This.

And look at how Australia is wondering out loud about the wisdom of tucking in behind the US in all things, always. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/us-alliance-comes-at-cost -of-regional-status--keating-20121114-29ck0.html

China and the US could very well enter into a cold war or a hot war. Perhaps this writer needs to do some research into the economic situation in Europe just before WW1. England had significant economic and social ties to Germany.

It's really not the best analogy, what with the massive expanse of globalization and intertwined financial markets. It's also the main reason that we probably won't see a full-blown WW3, instead opting for these smaller proxy wars and interventions to stabilize/replace rogue governments. By the time we actually got to that extreme, the nukes would be flying and we would't have any of this namby-pamby urban warfare.

It was a decent article. However, it missed the biggest nitpick of all: A GAME CALLED BLACK OPS HAS BARELY ANY STEALTH.

evilchode:China and the US could very well enter into a cold war or a hot war. Perhaps this writer needs to do some research into the economic situation in Europe just before WW1. England had significant economic and social ties to Germany.

the real reason they fell apart was that britain needed their navy to maintain their colonies (and as such their economic status at the top of the world.) They always opposed whichever power threatened the balance of power in Europe, since a dominant european power could combine naval forces and threaten them. That is why britian opposed the french under napolean, then joined the french against the russians and then joined france and russa against the germans when they created the High Sea Fleet, and threatened to to become the major euopean powe.

China and the US could very well enter into a cold war or a hot war. Perhaps this writer needs to do some research into the economic situation in Europe just before WW1. England had significant economic and social ties to Germany.

It's really not the best analogy, what with the massive expanse of globalization and intertwined financial markets. It's also the main reason that we probably won't see a full-blown WW3, instead opting for these smaller proxy wars and interventions to stabilize/replace rogue governments. By the time we actually got to that extreme, the nukes would be flying and we would't have any of this namby-pamby urban warfare.

It was a decent article. However, it missed the biggest nitpick of all: A GAME CALLED BLACK OPS HAS BARELY ANY STEALTH.

Mentalpatient87:This seems to be a breakdown of the single player. The single player that hasn't mattered in this series since the nuke went off in COD4.

/and I guess the russian airport thing//god damn BLOPS1's story was awful

Wasn't that one of the complaints about the last Modern Warfare? That the story stuff was pretty weak, but the online was as good as usual?Personally, I might be one of the worst online players in COD- like historically bad. So I'm more interested in the single player stuff at this point. Which means I'm currently wondering if I should get MOH Warfighter or COD Black OPS II,if I decide to get one at all.

pxlboy:Mr.Tangent: Offline mode fails to capture the whole COD experience. Hoping we can get a DLC that adds a voice track of 12 year-olds yelling horrible things about your mother during offline play.

This. I stopped playing online after Counterstrike: Source. Sticking to Borderlands, Prototype, and GTA. Sandbox games are infinitely more fun and satisfying than the online user "experience".

I agree completely. However, prototype and GTA have no endgame. Once you beat the game there is nothing left to do except start random gunfights with police and run people over. Dont get me wrong, thats a ton of fun, but only for so long. They need endless things to do after the story is over.

Your_Huckleberry:Mentalpatient87: This seems to be a breakdown of the single player. The single player that hasn't mattered in this series since the nuke went off in COD4.

/and I guess the russian airport thing//god damn BLOPS1's story was awful

Wasn't that one of the complaints about the last Modern Warfare? That the story stuff was pretty weak, but the online was as good as usual?Personally, I might be one of the worst online players in COD- like historically bad. So I'm more interested in the single player stuff at this point. Which means I'm currently wondering if I should get MOH Warfighter or COD Black OPS II,if I decide to get one at all.

Serously, historically bad. They keep stats, unfortunately.

Join my clan! Its ATl and the vortex of suck and blow will destroy the universe!

Your_Huckleberry:Mentalpatient87: This seems to be a breakdown of the single player. The single player that hasn't mattered in this series since the nuke went off in COD4.

/and I guess the russian airport thing//god damn BLOPS1's story was awful

Wasn't that one of the complaints about the last Modern Warfare? That the story stuff was pretty weak, but the online was as good as usual?Personally, I might be one of the worst online players in COD- like historically bad. So I'm more interested in the single player stuff at this point. Which means I'm currently wondering if I should get MOH Warfighter or COD Black OPS II,if I decide to get one at all.

Serously, historically bad. They keep stats, unfortunately.

Haha yeah, I played MW3's story and at the end it has you chasing the main bad guy up a really tall building and lynching him. I don't know why you didn't just shoot him, but whatever. I think it was trying to make a statement or something.

China and the US could very well enter into a cold war or a hot war. Perhaps this writer needs to do some research into the economic situation in Europe just before WW1. England had significant economic and social ties to Germany.

It's really not the best analogy, what with the massive expanse of globalization and intertwined financial markets. It's also the main reason that we probably won't see a full-blown WW3, instead opting for these smaller proxy wars and interventions to stabilize/replace rogue governments. By the time we actually got to that extreme, the nukes would be flying and we would't have any of this namby-pamby urban warfare.

It was a decent article. However, it missed the biggest nitpick of all: A GAME CALLED BLACK OPS HAS BARELY ANY STEALTH.

Translation that assumes the headline is not a troll posted by the mods: "I've been playing video games since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came out, so I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about and will do a blanket dismissal of your arguments because I know fark-all about the topic."

Axel_Gear:pxlboy: Mr.Tangent: Offline mode fails to capture the whole COD experience. Hoping we can get a DLC that adds a voice track of 12 year-olds yelling horrible things about your mother during offline play.

This. I stopped playing online after Counterstrike: Source. Sticking to Borderlands, Prototype, and GTA. Sandbox games are infinitely more fun and satisfying than the online user "experience".

I agree completely. However, prototype and GTA have no endgame. Once you beat the game there is nothing left to do except start random gunfights with police and run people over. Dont get me wrong, thats a ton of fun, but only for so long. They need endless things to do after the story is over.

Cant comment on borderlands. I never played it.

Well, those games have actual endings. The after-ending free play is there so players can collect stuff, play missions they missed, and do trophy/achievement clean-up.

Something I think black ops 2 got right is their incorporating variable storylines. There's several times when you are asked to make a decision (normally to execute or spare a character) or how well you search and gather intel which changes the way the game progresses. Not sure if it is a ME3 style "fluff choice" that truly doesn't matter, but I have seen my actions change the alliances in the game, and received assistance from former enemies because of what I did/didn't do. I actually plan on replaying certain missions differently to see how it alters the ending.

Also, I really enjoy the top-down RTS strikeforce missions. It's a fun diversion from the FPS game, but you can take control of the squads and mechs if you wish as well.

China and the US could very well enter into a cold war or a hot war. Perhaps this writer needs to do some research into the economic situation in Europe just before WW1. England had significant economic and social ties to Germany.

My favorite was when he lobbed the 1980s as being 20 years ago.

Dude, it was 30. And if you want to put it in game perspective it was 40-50.

Re: battlefield vs COD: cod seems much more aimed at single players in a multiplayer environment, while battlefield encourages and rewards team play.

BF seems like a group of moderately skilled players playing as a team, vs a group of higher skilled players going pure solo, the team would win. In COD the single players would win every time.

On one level you enter a clearing and a technical is coming right for you, your partner yells at you to shoot the driver. If you fail to do this and shoot he gunner instead he gives you a hard time, your character responds with, I shot the gunner, close enough. The interesting part is if you do shoot the driver the truck swerves to a halt near your position and you can then kill the gunner and use the machine gun against your enemies. Both outcomes play fluidly without any indication that the sequence is scripted. This is actually a pretty big improvement for COD single player.

The difference, multiplayer wise, between COD and BF is the pace. COD is more CQB oriented and not paying attention for 3 seconds is enough to have half your team dead and you well on your way to boning a match. Its THAT tight. BF is more vehicular focused and as such has far larger areas. This amount of 'dead space' allows for better planning but the crux is you can get into periods where 5 minutes elapse without a significant event happening for either your team or yourself.

Its like the difference between differing track events like COD being the 600m and BF being the 10000m. Each is essentially doing the same thing, its just the particular focus on one side is different than the other.

By-Tor and the SnowDogmatix: nervoust: Just give me my zombies and i'm cool

for real, co-op zombies is where it's at./picked it up today//chaos and confusion

Couldn't you have paid 4.99 for Left for Dead 1 and 2 bundle pack if you wanted zombies?

You seriously haven't played BLOPS zombies if you can make that comparison. There was a story that spanned across all the maps, and was pretty awesome to unlock and follow along. Granted you had to suffer through some pretty crappy maps to figure it all out, but still some pretty cool gems to be found on the maps. I hope BLOPS II continues with that same idea, although I will miss the Doctor. One of the most hilarious one liners I've heard in long time form him.

croesius:Something I think black ops 2 got right is their incorporating variable storylines. There's several times when you are asked to make a decision (normally to execute or spare a character) or how well you search and gather intel which changes the way the game progresses. Not sure if it is a ME3 style "fluff choice" that truly doesn't matter, but I have seen my actions change the alliances in the game, and received assistance from former enemies because of what I did/didn't do. I actually plan on replaying certain missions differently to see how it alters the ending.

Also, I really enjoy the top-down RTS strikeforce missions. It's a fun diversion from the FPS game, but you can take control of the squads and mechs if you wish as well.

If you're into military espionage with branching choices, get Alpha Protocol. It's a 3rd person shooter with RPG elements, and you can choose to go in guns blazing or stay quiet and sneak around. Every choice you make has an effect on people's reactions and the outcome of the story...even the order you choose to do your missions will change the dialogue and options later on.

You even get to choose your responses in every conversation, based on the 3 JBs: Aggressive (Jack Bauer), suave (James Bond) or direct (Jason Bourne). You can usually find it new for around $10 for PS3 or XBOX360.

FuryOfFirestorm:croesius: Something I think black ops 2 got right is their incorporating variable storylines. There's several times when you are asked to make a decision (normally to execute or spare a character) or how well you search and gather intel which changes the way the game progresses. Not sure if it is a ME3 style "fluff choice" that truly doesn't matter, but I have seen my actions change the alliances in the game, and received assistance from former enemies because of what I did/didn't do. I actually plan on replaying certain missions differently to see how it alters the ending.

Also, I really enjoy the top-down RTS strikeforce missions. It's a fun diversion from the FPS game, but you can take control of the squads and mechs if you wish as well.

If you're into military espionage with branching choices, get Alpha Protocol. It's a 3rd person shooter with RPG elements, and you can choose to go in guns blazing or stay quiet and sneak around. Every choice you make has an effect on people's reactions and the outcome of the story...even the order you choose to do your missions will change the dialogue and options later on.

You even get to choose your responses in every conversation, based on the 3 JBs: Aggressive (Jack Bauer), suave (James Bond) or direct (Jason Bourne). You can usually find it new for around $10 for PS3 or XBOX360.

I heard Alpha Protocol was absolutely horrifically bad. True? I really wanted it to be awesome, it's exactly what I wanted when I first played Mass Effect.

I'm on the fence on BLOPs2. I like the ideas they put in place, and so do the reviewers apparently. But it still feels like it's just CoD. Which I'm so unbearably burnt out on at this point.

I got Halo 4, and I'm extremely happy with it. I know the reviews on MoH Warfighter weren't great, but I had a blast with the multiplayer beta. I just have a hard time seeing how BLOPs2 is so significantly better than MOH Warfighter, when many of the complaints levels against MoH could probably be leveled against BLOPs2 as well.

And zombies is a blast, but I would rather play L4D2. Though the new team grief mode intrigues me on BLOPs2.

Strategeryz0r:I heard Alpha Protocol was absolutely horrifically bad. True? I really wanted it to be awesome, it's exactly what I wanted when I first played Mass Effect.

It's pretty good actually. There are a number of areas that are a little rough that could've been sorted out with a patch which never happened, but like the other person posting, I dug the game. You can see the potential for it to have been great, which is little frutrating, but if you can settle for it being pretty good then I'd recommend it.

I'm still waiting for a military shooter with realistic mobility options. Muscular elite special operations dudes should be able to climb things. A chest-high tarp-covered box should not be an impassable obstacle. The closest thing so far is Brink, but the levels are too small and the rest o f the game is just shoddy.